In designing the Fens, one of the primary questions was how to represent a dynamic system of flowing water to evoke memory of "city in the water" without sacrificing varying current uses. While looking at the ways in which the city of Boston memorialize its past, I realized that very few memorials have been devoted to its past of nature. I asked myself how people would react if I subtitle the Fens, "A Memorial to Water."

Naming the Fens a memorial is my critique toward the conventional way of selecting their past. I am proposing to build a memorial in the Fens. Memorial defined in my scheme is not one in a classic sense which is objectifying a historical event, but it is rather "living memorial," an ever- transforming and evolving memorial which can be experienced only through the ritual of everyday movements over time. I will preserve most of activities already happening in the Fens such as ball fields, rose garden, war memorials, and victory garden, but reshape and reconnect them into the flow of muddy river so that every element can be weaved as a whole.

A main strategy to develop this idea is to re-grade the Fens in a very subtle way, so that the figure of Fens keeps changing responding to fluctuation of water levels with precipitation. As a water level changes, the experience of the Fens also differs because a field becomes an island, an island becomes a path, and a path sometimes even disappears when it rains. Some of the spatial programs are only available at certain water levels. So the program in my scheme also fluctuates along with water. One cannot understand the Fens on only one visit. I wanted to make a place where people can compose their own memory of water and land in their own way through accumulated layers of memory.